Apple's Summer Event

Apple had a special summer event today at their campus for the press, and it was strictly about the Mac. I've read all that coverage and even watched the tour of iLife, so I feel pretty qualified to give some thoughts on it. They basically just gave the iMac a makeover and beefed up the hardware. The rest of it was trying to pitch the new iLife and .Mac. I don't know that the changes to .Mac were significant enough to save it since I can't use it, but I loved the changes I saw to iLife. I don't know that there aren't other products out there that wouldn't create movies as quickly and easily as the new iMovie, but it's still really awesome. I loved watching the demo for it, and I also really enjoyed the iPhoto demo, which seemed to be pretty smart about organizing photos into events and it was cool that you could hover over albums to skim through its pictures (same for clips in iMovie). These are both products that set the bar for how making movies and messing with your photos should be. They're not perfect or anything, but they still make switching to Mac really tempting. I don't know why the new iMac has a shorter, thinner keyboard. It doesn't look very comfortable, but at least Jobs is getting over his key phobia and loosening up a bit. I like how they wrapped up with a Q&A session that told us nothing other than that they've also upgraded the Mac Mini, and we'll see Apple TV news soon. All in all, not a bad little event, though nothing especially exciting came out of it.

I was temp bted to make today's main topic about hiring because of this article, but decided not to because I've already said a lot of what I want to say on this topic, and I just spoke about recruiting yesterday anyway. But I strongly agree that it's key to spend more money on expert programmers than to slack and hire average or sub-par programmers. The weak links on a development team become sore thumbs pretty quickly, and it really does become kind of a sink or swim environment. The good recruits should never sink given good management (not just an MBA who thinks he's hot shit, they need to be technical).

I'm really exhausted, so I'm going to close up here with a couple of one-liners. If you're not sure the best way to IM, then you'll waste plenty of time at this list of Instant Messaging tools. I probably didn't know about more than 20 or 30 items on that list (I personally love Pidgin and Meebo). The Guardian has a great lesson in history: technology's 10 greatest legal battles. This is the kind of stuff your kids will likely learn in social studies (or their kids, at the least).

However, I was intrigued enough by the international trailer for Beowolf that I figured I'd plug that.

Now for the Tuesday Twosome:

1. Two places you go to for relaxation (spa, beach, etc.)
The gym and the lake.
2. Two activities you do to relax:
Sleep and listen to music
3. Two people who are able to calm you when you are stressed-out:
Myself and my girl.
4. Two songs that always make you feel better:
Yellow (Coldplay) and Can't Help Falling in Love.
5. Two people/pets that you miss the most when you go on vacation/holiday:
My brother and my girl.